The Sea Beast

Though a bit too derivative for its own good, this Netflix seaborne adventure features top-notch animation, an emotive voice cast and plenty of swashbuckling action.

“The world is wide, Jacob, and you don’t know everything.”

“The Sea Beast” is a rip-roaring seaborne adventure with top-notch CGI animation and a very gritty, emotive voice cast. It’s set in a world of pirates and monsters, as an Ahab-like seeks vengeance on the greatest leviathan in the ocean while younger, more malleable characters show curiosity and empathy in the face of blood oaths and vendettas.

Director and co-writer (with Nell Benjamin) Chris Williams is a Disney veteran and Oscar winner — “Big Hero Six,” “Moana” — who moves the story along at a brisk pace, giving us the mythology of this place, its history and its fault lines. There’s lots of swashbuckling action as harpoons fly, cannons blast, monsters churn the waters like a small tempest and ram boats with shuddering impact.

Karl Urban voices Jacob Holland, a famous hunter aboard the most famous hunting ship, the Inevitable. He lost everything to one of the creatures as a boy, and was rescued by the Inevitable’s captain, Crow (Jared Harris), who taught him everything he knows and considers him a son.

Crow is old and grizzled now, missing an eye courtesy of a battle with with the greatest beast of all 30 years ago, the Red Bluster. His intention is finally kill the Bluster, retire and hand the Inevitable over to over Jacob.

(Why not Sarah Sharpe — voiced by Marianne Jean-Baptiste — “the most loyal first mate that ever sailed the seas?” It is a question worth addressing, as an otherwise very multicultural cast of characters seems to reserve the mantle of captaincy for white dudes. The movie doesn’t bother to.)

Stowing away on this greatest of adventures is Maisie Brumble (Zaris-Angel Hato), a sharp-witted and gutsy girl of about 10. She comes from a long line of hunters, and runs away from her orphanage for a shot at the Bluster along with the Inevitable crew. Jacob wants to drop her off at the next port, but Crow likes her spirit — “she’s all vinegar, that one.”

The creatures come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, reminding me of the kaiju from “Pacific Rim.” There are crab-like ones, another resembling an octopus, and all sorts of variations with barbs, fangs, tentacles, horns and everything in between.

The Red Bluster is an enormous whale-like creature, many times the size of the Inevitable, with a massive horn rising up out of the sea like an angry, crimson iceberg. He doesn’t seem to have limbs but, as we’ll see, is quite capable of going places you might not expect. He seems to return Crow’s antipathy with equal vigor, charging the ship upon sight.

He’s also apparently quite smart, able to outfox Crow’s various tricks like spearing him with a barrel to keep him afloat and forcing him to pull the ship like a horse does a stagecoach — a little of the ol’ Captain Quint.

Without giving too much away, Jacob and Maisie find themselves separated from Crow and the Inevitable, both figuratively and literally, as they have their own Jonah-like encounter with the Bluster and are eventually marooned on an island and have to find their way back.

It’s here that Maisie begins to have second thoughts about pursuing a life as a beast hunter, though Jacob needs a little more convincing. Something like a father/daughter bond begins to grow between them, and Jacob must decide if this familial connection or his old one will hold sway.

Meanwhile, the greedy king and queen, who have a transactional relationship with the hunters, are planning to replace them with their own gargantuan newfangled ship, the Imperator, helmed by an equally audacious admiral (Dan Stevens). So the Bluster hunt has the added weight of representing a fight for the future of their entire way of life.

“The Sea Beast” is filled with all sorts of great detail and background — the scars knotting the limbs and faces of the hunters, the similar wounds scouring the body of the Bluster, the lavish costumes and weaponry. You can practically feel the salt spray on your cheek as the humans charge into the latest scrum with the undersea leviathans.

At two hours the movie is a bit longer than it needs to be, tarrying here and there or getting off its navigational charts into murky storytelling waters. For example, a visit by Crow to a strange sort of merchant/witch is filled with all sorts of dire portents, but nothing ever seems to come of it.

The movie borrows liberally from other movies — “Jaws,” “Moana” and “How to Train Your Dragon” especially. The Bluster’s noggin even resembles Toothless’ from certain angles. And, of course, the “Moby Dick” themes run straight down its spine.

It’s something all films do, though here it sometimes feels less like homage than straight-up larceny. Still, it’s a rousing story well-told, and certainly equal to anything animated I’ve seen in theaters of late.